Awards

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About Southern Stars Group, LLC

Southern Stars has a long history in the space business. We've been developing planetarium software since 1993. Our SkyChart III for Mac and Windows won Sky & Telescope magazine's first Hot New Products award in 1998.

In June 2009, we launched our first iPhone app, SkyVoyager, now renamed SkySafari. Simultaneously, we developed SkyFi, the first wireless iPhone-based solution for telescope control. That product, and the iPhone app, won a Best of Show award at MacWorld 2010.

Sky & Telescope magazine named SkySafari 3 a top new Hot Product for 2012. SkySafari 3 has been officially endorsed by Astronomers Without Borders as its preferred mobile astronomy app worldwide. As of mid-2013, the iOS and Android versions of SkySafari have been downloaded more than 2 million times from the iTunes Store and Google Play.

Also in 2012, Southern Stars conducted a successful crowdfunding campaign to launch an educational CubeSat mission called SkyCube. The satellite was launched on 9 January 2014, and deployed from the International Space Station into its own orbit on 28 February 2014.

In December, 2013, the SkySafari astronomy apps for iOS, Android, and Mac OS X were acquired by Simulation Curriculum Corporation, along with the SkyFi and SkyWire telescope control accessories. Southern Stars continues to play a consulting role in SCC's continued development of these products, while focussing its core business on the explosively-growing commercial nano-satellite industry.

Southern Stars Group, LLC is incorporated in California, and headquartered in San Francisco. Our mission is to help people tap into their natural curiosity about the cosmos, via the mobile devices they use every day. Our market is the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have a curiosity about the universe, and are willing to purchase a mobile app which helps them learn more about it. Our motto is: We Bring Space Down to Earth!

About Our Logo

Our logo symbolizes adventure, exploration, and the spirit of discovery. The typeface used for our company name evokes the great voyages of discovery that first introduced explorers from the northern hemisphere to the riches of the southern sky. And that typeface has a name - Stellar Lyra - which we couldn't resist!

Astronomically, the roots of our logo lie in the ancient constellation Argo Navis – the ship sailed by Jason and the Argonauts. Only visible from the southern hemisphere, Argo Navis was subdivided in the 1700s into four smaller constellations: Vela (the Sail), Puppis (the Stern), Pyxis (the Compass) and Carina (the Keel). Vela contains a well-known asterism of four stars, the “false cross”, depicted in our logo as the sails which power the Argo across the celestial seas.

And – in case there's any doubt - our software covers both celestial hemispheres, not just the Southern Stars.